Posts Tagged ‘Brigitte Lin’

We go back and examine Tsui Hark’s groundbreaking special effects extravaganza Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain to see whether its Chinese roots mixed with Western special effects knowhow still has a place in Hong Kong cinema history and Sammo Hung reverses kung fu comedy tropes while also making his characters rage and beat the crap out of each other in exemplary fashion… in his 1980 movie The Victim. With Kenny B and Paul Fox of the East Screen West Screen podcast.

Before there was the On Fire’s, the master in training would start shaping his voice in genres he’d rarely if ever was associated with. It’s the tale of Ringo Lam and this is The Director’s Series on his debut Esprit D’Amour.

Stepping it up cinematically and making his Wuxia pian debut, Ronny Yu emerged as a voice as one to be reckoned with. Therefore we’ll be reviewing his 1993 movie The Bride With White Hair, starring Leslie Cheung and Brigitte Lin. Fast forward to a director who was setting the action cinema on fire (and some of his actors), John Woo made his Hollywood debut with Hard Target and that’s we are reviewing also. With Kenny B and the co-host of the East Screen West Screen podcast: Paul Fox.

Because we had fun discussing colourful Wuxia pian last time (when The Ghost Hill was reviewed), we jump ahead a decade to Night Orchid by Chang Peng-yi, starring Adam Cheng and Brigitte Lin. Memorable color for the genre? We’ll see. Also, we get very sparse feedback regardless of the show on the network but when a listener request is put forth towards Taiwan Noir… a specialized, niche show, we listen. Andrew in California wrote in and told us of a movie that kind of scared him as a child. Through surreal scenes, spooky sound design, eerie music but largely, we’re also dealing with a kung fu movie here with hopefully, because it is called that, The Greatest Plot.

Released originally 20 years ago, the multi-award winning drama from Wong Kar-Wai consists of two stories told in sequence, each about a lovesick Hong Kong policeman mulling over his relationship with a woman. (Wikipedia) Read the rest of this entry »

Past the weirder more experimental side of Kirk Wong, 1986’s True Colours and 1988’s Gunmen represents something more traditional: The brotherhood, romance, gunplay mashup and in the case of the latter, a low budget period effort in the vein of Untouchables but also in the vein of violent action and firey mayhem with a detailed, loving clash between producer and director.

Take a bunch of good looking, iconic girls, plant them in movie reality courtesy of die hard movie nerd Chu Yen-Ping and you get products that probably outrages most rather than delights but that’s ok. It sparks conversation if it’s an homage or not to steal so many scenes from other movies and their music for your own. For this episode of Taiwan Noir therefore you have to imagine a paralell movie world where everything is possible. We got 80s pop star haircuts, a wild west town with 80s style grafitti, Chinese Nazis, the Ku Klux Clan and a lot is set to Ennio Morricone’s music. It’s of course a double bill of Taiwanese reefer madness in the form of Golden Queen’s Commando and Pink Force Commando! In Last Taiwanese Movies Watched, there’s challenges in devil areas and Joey Wong in a boobie flick that is equally short and long.

The Podcast On Fire Network aims to provide a large, continually expanding overview of Asian cinema. On the flagshow Podcast On Fire, the big guns out of Hong Kong cinema gets a spotlight through discussion and review while the remainder of the network shows gives you insight into Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese cinema and the history of adult oriented Hong Kong cinema!